"Is Yahoo! a threat to the business model of traditional news organizations? Yeah!" Quoted on the Wall Street Journal, Paul Grabowicz, director of the New Media program at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism may not be exaggerating. Over the past six months, Yahoo! News has topped every online news site in unique visitor traffic. Agreements with approximately 100 news organizations and searches through 7,000 other online news sites, Yahoo! News appeals to the news hound who prefers to read news from various sources, which, from the latest stats, appears to be the majority.
This week's testing of new features that permits the reader to jump through headlines from various sources without having to wait for source pages to reload and accompanies headlines with content from blogs and other sites, is bound to increase Yahoo's popularity. Yahoo boasts another advantage over traditional news sites in that most of their readers come from one of its other various sites including email and videogames. The popular news aggregator uses a "hybrid" editing strategy, using computers to scan the multitude of sources and human editors to decide what is page-worthy, different from Google who's news site uses only computers and established titles which use only human editors.
While these news organizations are still feeling out their online strategies, they may want to take some notes from Yahoo. In fact, some papers are already attempting the mixed news source option. The UK's Guardian and the Los Angeles Times adopted an RSS strategy in January (see former postings here and here) that readers download from their Websites, but that also provides feeds from other news organizations. The verdict is still out as to if this strategy is helping or hurting brand recognition.
In related news on Poynter, Yahoo! is stitching its digital fibers all over the fabric of the United States with Yahoo!Local. Jumping on the niche small business market, Yahoo!Local provides free websites specifically aimed at the 50% of US local businesses that haven't yet armed themselves for the digital revolution. If they decide to go online, these approximately 10 million
(yes, you read correctly; 10 MILLION!) small businesses will receive a five page Website with a unique URL... for free!
Being expected that these businesses will not be too Internet savvy nor have the time to develop an intricate site from scratch, Yahoo! has created a template that is designed to take about ten minutes to fill with company information. If satisfied, local businesses can also pay USD 9.95 for an "enhanced business listing." Yahoo! Local's general manager, Paul Levine hopes that these companies will eventually "upgrade to paid advertising products or other small business services Yahoo! offers."
Looks like this Internet native is covering all the bases. Competitor responses to Yahoo!'s innovations will be interesting to follow.
